For nearly three months last summer, the sensitive personal data of more than 145 million American consumers was exposed to bad actors thanks to some “ham-fisted” behavior on the part of credit reporting giant, Equifax. Americans were outraged, and lawmakers began to scrutinize Equifax’s behavior during the breach, including three Equifax senior executives selling shares worth almost $1.8 million in the days after the company discovered the hack.

Members of Congress Tackle Consumer Protection Failures from Equifax Breach

Last week, Congress held four hearings to investigate the Equifax data breach, which jeopardized the highly sensitive data of 145 millions Americans. The exposed consumer information includes social security numbers, prior addresses, student loans, credit card numbers, and other pieces of private data compiled into credit reports that determine if a consumer qualifies for employment, loans, or new lines of credit. For days, members of Congress questioned former Equifax CEO Richard Smith as to how the breach could have occurred and what steps the company was taking to protect consumers. Mr. Smith resigned in September after the extent of the breach was fully disclosed. During the hearings, he offered little in terms of solutions on how to protect consumers going forward, but his answers revealed significant problems with our current data security regime that Congress must address.

This past week, Congress demanded answers from former Equifax CEO Richard Smith about what, exactly, went so terribly wrong in his company’s handling of its massive data breach this summer, and to ask how to keep something like this from happening again. Over the course of four hearings in both the Senate and the House, it became clear that the list of “wrongs” is lengthy. But one of the most damning revelations emerged in the aftermath of the breach in the company’s attempts to mitigate harm post-breach. To be clear, we’re not talking about mitigating consumer harm – we’re talking about Equifax protecting itself from accountability through the use of forced arbitration.

The Right Response to Equifax

Lots and lots and lots of people are talking about the Equifax breach. Many share similar views: this can’t happen again, Equifax should face some economic consequence, consumers need to be better educated, we need legislation, we need regulation. All of which may be valid and reasonable, but few of which will actually happen. Foremost among them, we will have another breach.